Vandals' transition game needs some work
Not sure if the voting media, or the Big Sky Conference coaches, thought Idaho would make a smoother transition from the FBS Sun Belt Conference to the FCS Big Sky.
The conference’s coaches picked Idaho to finish fourth in the 13-team league, and the media tabbed the Vandals to finish fifth.
But it didn’t take long to realize the Vandals have some work to do to compete in their new/old league.
IN MOST of the games the Vandals lost this season, the opposition had receivers that could separate and/or make big catches in traffic, or running backs that could speed away from the defenders, or quarterterbacks who could get the ball to said big-play receiver, or defenders who could step in front and make the interception.
The Vandals have capable players at those positions, too — just not quite the playmakers the other teams do. The other teams were just a little bit better in that department.
“It was definitely a transition,” Idaho senior defensive back Dorian Clark said earlier in the week. “The Sun Belt was more a ground and pound (league), and the Big Sky like a totally different game, more passing.
“The Big Sky runs a lot of pick routes, so it’s hard to press across the board.”
Maybe that explains why Idaho had more success this year in the Big Sky playing “physical teams” — the Vandals went 3-1 vs. Portland State, Montana State, Southern Utah and former Sky member North Dakota.
Meanwhile, against the conference teams littered with playmakers — Eastern Washington, Idaho State, Montana and UC Davis — Idaho went 0-4 and was outscored by a combined 190-90.
Bottom line — Idaho has some good players, but needs a few more “guys”.
“It didn’t turn out the way we wanted, but I enjoyed playing in the conference,” Idaho fifth-year senior wide receiver David Ungerer said.
In his first few years in Moscow, Petrino was able to lure a few players out of the south, mostly by dangling the Division I carrot. That isn’t available anymore, but he said he will still use his recruiting ties down there, built from several seasons as an assistant coach in the Southeastern Conference.
But ...
“As we move forward and keep getting better, we’ve got to get the best guys from right around here for sure,” Petrino said. “But we’re always going to use the relationships we have.”
I THINK back to something Rob Spear, the former Idaho athletic director, liked to point out about when the Vandals switched leagues.
Give them a few years, and they became competitive in their new digs.
Over the last two-plus decades, Idaho went from the Big Sky to the Big West to the Sun Belt to the Western Athletic Conference to, after one year as an independent, back to the Sun Belt and now back to the Big Sky.
In Year 3 in the Big West, the Vandals won the Humanitarian Bowl. In their fifth year in the WAC, they won the Humanitarian Bowl again. In their third year in Stint 2 in the Sun Belt, Idaho won in Boise again, this time the renamed Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.
So let’s see what the Vandals can come up with in the next couple of years, in Stint 2 in the Big Sky.
“I think we’re going to be good,” Petrino said of next year’s team. “I think we’re young. We played a bunch of young guys this year. We don’t have a ton of scholarships for next year, but the ones that we do have, we’ll have to do a really good job of picking the right people. All those guys that got all kinds of reps this year should be way better players next year.”
Added his son, junior quarterback Mason Petrino, “I felt a lot of young guys made strides at the end of the season going in. It’s just too bad how the season ended up. We didn’t want this. It was too bad. I think a lot of improvements and strides were made by the young guys in practice, and throughout the season you could see we were getting better. We just have to bring it next year. We know what’s expected of us. We know the conference now.”
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.